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The 

Twentieth 

Century 



How to A bolish Abject 
Poverty And Anarchism, 
and MaKe the Trusts Co¬ 
operative Under the Com¬ 
petitive System. ^ ^ ^ ^ 


/Sftctbo D W oulft iproDuce: 

Real prosperity among the masses, 

A normal operation of supply and demand. 

financial panics would then be impossible. 

Constant employment and wage for all 
workers. 

Continuous business for the business men 
and professional men. 

Distribution, instead of concentration of 
benefits, under the competitivesysiem. 


I 

^ ^ DEDICATED TO THE TOILERS OF THE WORLD. ^ 


THE ONLY POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THE IMPENDING CRISIS BETWEEN 
LABOR AMO CAPITAL. 

EVERY BREAD WINNER SHOULD READ IT. 



BY ERNEST 




















































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Ernest A. 


Mornberger. 


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In my present position # could scarcely be justified were 
/ to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of re¬ 
turn despotism. It is the effort to place capital on an equal 
footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of govern¬ 
ment. Labor is prior to and Independent of capital. Capital 
is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor 
had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and 
deserves much the higher consideration.—Abraham Lincoln. 


9 ) O 

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Copyright 1904 
By Ernest A. Hornberger 


By 

White Ham#. 


© 



«. • 

err 

x 



FROM THE PRESS OF 
THE LABOR WORLD PUBLISHING CO 




I am not a Socialist. I consider *hat the triumph of Socialism 
would mean tyranny over individual effort and genius. As Social¬ 
ism must have leaders, who in time would become tyrants. No 
Monarch, or plutocrat, fears that Socialism will ever sway the ma¬ 
jority of thinking, or free people. There is much greater liberty unde r 
the competitive system. The competitive system is all right if we 
have a proper adjustment of conditions.. As it is practiced now it is 
MIGHT OVER RIGHT. 

Others may conquer every known and unknown invention or 

„ iJV 

engineering feat, or produce profound writings and books, on every 
known creed, subject, or inspiration, BUT THE MAN OR WOMAN 
WHO PROPOSES A FEASIBLE PLAN TO GIVE WORK AND 
WAGE TO EVERY MAN AND WOMAN THAT NEEDS IT, 
stands nearest to God in greatness of human benefaction, and that 
system once established would never be abandoned by the human race, 
as it would be the means of a permanent prosperity constantly flow¬ 
ing through all the fibres of individual and national life. 


THE AUTHOR. 


















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The Twentieth Century Aioakening. 


7 


The 

Twentieth 

Century 


AWAKENING. 


"By Ernest A. Hornberger. 


I will introduce a few quotations from. speeches of 
Prominent National Thinkers, in line with the Spirit of 
this work. 

President Roosevelt said in his Thanksgiving procla¬ 
mation October 31st, 1903. 

In no other place has the experiment of government by the 
people for the people been tried on so vast a scale. Failure would 
not only be a dreadful thing for us, but a dreadful thing for all 
mankind. 

That great Democratic American, William J. Bryan, 
said in London, England, on December 3, 1903. 

The ambition and pride of a people of a country should be not 
in saying: “Our Army and Navy are the best in the world,” but in 











8 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


having the best government in the world, and being able to say 
that “Our Government stands for justice and humanity, and is so 
recognized in all parts of the world/’ 

The United States of America are going to develop a civilization 
in advance of any the world has ever seen. 

The late great Republican leader, Marcus A. Hanna, 
said in the National Magazine January, 1904: 

This is essentially a great economic age, an age when energy, 
materials and purposes are all being utilized for the best. When 
a man loses his day’s work and he is compelled to spend that time in 
absolute idleness, the whole community suffers a loss as well as he, 
and it is something that -is lost forever to this Commonwealth. 
Both capital and labor must yield in time to the great law of fair 
dealing, man to man. In proportion to a man’s ambitions and his 
ability to earn for himself a betterment of his condition, there will 
be a striving on his part to attain his ideals and this in itself is 
the germ of progress'. 

Andrew Carnegie, by far the greatest rich humanitarian 
of the world, on March 8th, 1904, at Cooper Union said: 

The distribution of wealth is the most serious problem of our 
age. I know myself there are great inequalities in that distribution. 
For that reason the rich should provide their surplus wealth for the 
poor, but the rightful provision of that wealth is the great thing to 
be first considered. Every Multi-Millionaire should remember his 
fellow men, and by that I mean all men. I don’t recognize aniy 
class. 

The American Bar Association comprising the most 
brilliant attorneys of America, at its convention August 
27th, 1903, at Hot Springs, Va., proposed as a remedy to 
control the "trusts and monopolies” 

To tax them, and grade the taxation upwards, and raise the 
rate with each additional million dollars they acquire. 

This is what the Author advocated in an article writ¬ 
ten and printed in 1899 in Deadwood, S. D. "Equality.” 




The Twentieth Century Aivakening. 


9 


Chancellor Yon Buelow, of Germany, asserted in the 
Reichstag 

That Monarchies have made more progress in social conditions 
than Republics. 

To compare the unhappy internal life of millions of 
the toilers of the United States to the much happier social 
conditions of the masses of toilers of Germany the Chan¬ 
cellor has made a good point. Yet the opportunity for 
improving their conditions is far greater with the masses 
of the republic, if they maintain their government of, for 
and by the people. 

President Charles F. Thwing, of Adelbert College, in 
his discourse on labor and capital June 12, 1904, at Cleve¬ 
land, 0., after commenting on the selfishness, regardless of 
human life or law proclivities, and tyranny of capital and 
the dissatisfaction and fierce unrest of underpaid labor, con¬ 
cludes with: 

I sometimes fear that forces now active may wreck themselves 
on the community and again overthrow civilization as it was over¬ 
thrown in Southern Europe 1,500 years ago. 

But there will be no trouble of this kind if we give all 
men and women work and wage. 

That noted federal jurist, Judge Grosscup, in Chicago, 
October 9, 1903, said: 

The tendency of our nation’s commerce is to place the property 
in the hands of the few, advises change in jurisdiction, and thinks 
that the national government should control instead of States. 



10 


TJie Twentieth Century Awakening. 


THE A WAKENING. 

Why has the United States many thousands of people 
in almost abject poverty, and a tramp system that has no 
parallel on earth, when the facts as summed up by the 
Wall Street Journal are these: In area the United States 
is only one-fourteenth of the world, in population the United 
States has only one-eighteenth of the world and the wealth 
of the United States (one hundred billion dollars), is one- 
fourth of the world? How is the enormous wealth of One 
Hundred Billions of Dollars distributed? Every reader and 
thinker knows that the excess is mainly among the few 
favored ones. When one man, John T. Bockefeller, is per¬ 
mitted to acquire one billion dollars, or one-hundredth of 
the nation’s wealth, is there not something radically wrong 
with our economic system that needs adjusting? The work¬ 
ing people of the United States in 115 years under a free 
constitutional government, have amassed a wealth of one 
hundred billions of dollars; enough to give every man, woman 
and child of a ninety million population over one thousand 
dollars each, and yet thousands are in poverty, out of work, 
or living fijom hand to mouth, and daily the small pro¬ 
prietors of the nation’s commercial system are retrograding 
into and swelling the ranks of the dependent employes, 
because the arrogance and greed of the wealthy combinations 



The Twentieth Century AivaJcening. 


11 


make it impossible to do a profitable business; and daily the 
small property holders are haying their humble homes con¬ 
sumed by the foreclosures of mortgages that it has been 
impossible to pay off, owing to the absorption of the wages, 
by the high price of sustenance demanded by the mnopolies 
in power. Is there a remedy? I hope to present it in 
these pages. It is fair to presume that all civilized human 
beings wish the general condition of their fellow mortals to 
be comfortable and happy. It is also safe to assume that 
none are so rich and fortunate but what they can in some 
measure feel for and pity the condition of those in poverty. 
The few degenerates that do not feel that way are to be 
pitied, and need to be resurrected from their mental abbera- 
tion or deformity. Therefore it is only in the method in 
which we attempt to accomplish vital improvement that we 
can differ. 

To begin with, I am going to show the reader that in 
our earlier history of this country abject poverty was 
hardly known, but that its increase has been steady as the 
wealth of our nation has increased, so that now in this twen¬ 
tieth century the amount of abject poverty has reached such 
an alarming stage that the inhumanity and suffering are 
appalling. I argue that the internal conditions 'of our 
nation, among the masses of the common people should im¬ 
prove with the ascendency of wealth of the whole nation, 
instead of retrograding, and the condition of the people 
becoming worse as the general wealth enhances. The New 
York State board of Charities under direction of Secretary 
Eobert W. Hebberd, upon careful research has found com¬ 
paratively no poverty in Yew York City and vicinity from 




12 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


1609 to 1664. In 1700 the poor house was vacant and in 1702 
the annual expenditures for charities in New York City was 
$1,500, while the present cost for maintaining New York 
City’s poor is about FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS 
annually. Many other cities of the Union can furnish simi¬ 
lar statistics. 

The great conflict of force between labor and 
capital that the thinkers of the world claim is inevitable, 
and that would be too bloody and horrible to forecast, is 
absolutely avoidable if the remedy I propose is adapted, 
because, when men and women are all emplovd at living 
wages, there is no occasion for remonstrance of a desperate 
nature, and those of pure anarchistic inclination, who are 
really only a very few, could find no material to work with, 
as employed people are a contented and happy lot and not 
easily stirred to needless violence, especially when nothing 
could be gained thereby, as every one who thinks at all 
knows, "that even if the entire wealth of the United States 
were divided up, and each man, woman and child would get 
one thousand dollars as his share, it would only be a short 
time until many would have their portion wasted or circu¬ 
lated, and the few would again be rich. Because of this 
inequality of talent among the human race, is the very pith 
of my argument. The distributors, help everybody right 
along, their money circulates. The accumulators, whether 
through luck or management, withhold from circulation, 
demanding interest, and should be compelled by national law 
to pay a special employment tax to give work to the human 
beings that make it possible for them to accumulate. 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


13 


How to Abolish Abject Poverty. 

[ am going to propose a 
remedy that if adopted will revolutionize the condition of the 
working people throughout the entire world, and give them 
constant employment with its attendant comforts, happi¬ 
ness and blessings, because if adopted in the United States, 
other governments must follow or they could not hold their 
people. 

On the other hand it would work no injustice to those 
that have wealth. As it could be borne by them without 
suffering or hardship, and would be simply human equity, 
on the same plan as nature sets the example for us. Taking 
away from the great bodies of nature's resources, from the 
streams, the lakes, the oceans; in mists, and vapors distribut¬ 
ing them over the land in rains to feed large and small 
animate nature, ranging from human beings to birds, insects, 
reptiles, trees, plants and grasses. 

To bring about this result the combined labor unions 
of the nation should make it their especial mission, and they 
will be assisted and sustained by every man and woman that 
protests against present uncivilized conditions. The accom* 
plishment would bring the higher civilization to the world 
that Christ aimed at. 

One fact that should be borne in mind consantly is 
He that aggressively hinders a general reform for humanity 
from a selfish motive, is on his part guilty of the suffering 
that results therefrom to those that might be benefitted, and 



14 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


he that carelessly hinders, by being too indifferent to exert 
himself for his fellow mortals, is likewise guilty, and I 
firmly believe that the creator will hold him to account. 


A Hot Bed to Breed MSUSonairesm 

Pittsburg has been the greatest hot bed in the world 
to breed millionaires. Pittsburg should also be the cradle 
from which the emancipation of poverty must spring. I 
would like to assist in bringing it about. Born in Pittsburg 
in 1856, working among its people as a newsboy and boot- 
black at the age of eight years, and toiling from that to 
higher walks in life, I have experienced aii the vicissitudes 
of the bread winner. I have traveled extensively all over 
the Union, and have studied sociological conditions in many 
States and cities. I think Pittsburg has the most happy, 
and unhappy, conditions, side by side, of any city I have 
ever been in. For fifteen years I have thought earnestly 
and persistently, and year by year have been strengthened 
in the conviction that the remedy I propose can be applied 
successfully. Indeed even from my boyhood I have felt 
that I had a mission in life to help equalize conditions 
between the poor and the rich. 

I write from the standpoint that mankind must make 
this earth what they want it to be. and believe God intends 
it so, barring natural laws. 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


15 


The Earth the Abode of Mankind 
by the Grace of Godm 

God made the earth the abode of mankind. Mankind 
is responsible on earth for the happiness or misery of the 
human family. Are we in as good condition in this Twen¬ 
tieth Century as we should be? Thousands of deep thinker^ 
say no, and millions of suffering men, women and children 
prove it from experiences so bitter, so despairing, so agon¬ 
izing, that it is a great wjonder there are not more, yes 
vastly more of the already appalling number of criminals, 
murderers, robbers, suicides, and insanity. Can this con¬ 
dition be changed, improved, and. made a radically very 
happy one ftor mankind in general by legislation? Yes. 
How? I will tell you. From the days of the origin of 
mankind, as far back as any history goes, abject poverty 
and avarice, have been the principal promoters of crime, 
misery, suffering, and want. Humanity has made many 
grand strides toward civilization since the tribal days. -Em¬ 
pires, Monarchies, Kingdoms and Republics have risen, 
flourished, decayed and fallen. To-day many broad enlight¬ 
ened governments of the earth are administering rule to 
many millions of human beings of the globe. But in all 
the list of nations there is still some thing lacking in each 
government, and that is—EQUITY—to the human beings 
that in all countries need it most, namely—The struggling 
toilers. 

By toilers I mean all those who must work and toil for 



16 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


their own or families’ sustenance. Every government that 
has ever existed has been swayed and influenced by wealth 
and the wealthy. Indifference and even contempt have 
ever been the lot and the portion of the poor. Is that equity 
to the masses of the human family ? What is the grandest, 
purest and most noble attribute of advanced and higher 
civilizaion? I answer humanity, and I know that I find the 
echo in millions of civilized hearts. Then why in common 
humanity, does not this great Republic, the UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA, live up to the fundamental prin¬ 
ciples upon which it was founded, and be a nation of, for 
and by the people, instead of mainly a government of, for 
and by the wealthy. Are the people of this nation so happy 
and prosperous that their condition can not be vastly 
improved? Study our record of crimes for gain, suicide 
and starvation from poverty, in the midst of plenty, and you 
will have your answer. Wealth sways our councils, our 
legislatures, our congress, and our judiciary, our ppor have 
comparatively no champions. Is that equity ? 

Every observer knows that the wealthy send their lobby¬ 
ists to the national capital and that they secure abjout every¬ 
thing they go after in their interest. The railroads, the 
manufacturers, the steamship companies, and all the known 
trusts and monopolies for which this nation is getting so 
fampus (or infamous) all go down to Washington and get 
all the legislation they need, and a great deal more than is 
good for the general people. 

What in the meantime are the middlemen and the small 
tradesmen doing. The middlemen are clerking for the rail¬ 
roads or trusts at the salary which the trusts figure to get 




The Twentieth Century Awakening . 


17 


back again in the advanced price of living, and small trades¬ 
men sell the trnst goods at a barely living profit, and ont 
of that they are carrying the mass of honest (and some 
dishonest) toilers for 30, 60 or 90 days or longer in order 
to do business. The railroads or trusts won’t credit the 
storekeepers unless they show securities, but the storekeeper 
must run a risk on the toiler, while the toiler is waiting and 
crediting the railroad and manufacturer 30 days for his 
wage. 

This is one of the glaring inequalities between the 
rich and the poior. The government is paternal to the rich, 
but the great mass of toilers, small tradesmen and middle¬ 
men can’t go down to Washington to lobby 

What Would They Ask Fop? 

Up to this time there has appeared to be nothing. 
And yet there is something of such vital importance that 
they should lobby for, and demand in all earnestness, that 
if secured it would revolutionize the world. Let me first 
present to you some pictures by other writers—of some of 
the conditions that confront the nation of toilers in 1904. 
Representing excessive wealth, and abject povert} T , for I fear 
1 may be charged with exaggeration should I attempt to 
depict the horrors of poverty so widespread. 

Not many years ago the millionaires of the- United 
States were less than ten in number. To-day there are 
hundreds of them. All Owing to the disregard of the toilers 
for their rights and demands for simple justice and human¬ 
ity. Millions of human beings have in those years suffered, 



18 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


toiled, and many have gone to paupers’ and suicides’ graves, 
after helping to pile up fortunes for the favored few. An¬ 
drew Carnegie, worth over three hundred millions an income 
of over forty thousand dollars a day. John D. Rockefeller, 
ten hundred millions, or over three times the income Mr. 
Carnegie has. The Vanderbilts, Astors, Goulds Morgan 
and many other colossuses of finance, besides over fifteen 
hundred trusts, combinations, and corporations, with their 
millions and even billions in capital, while hungry men, 
women and poor innocent little children are suffering the 
agony of the damned, in—out of work—abject poverty, and 
to think too—the majority rules in a Republic! 

The Chicago Record Herald draws a striking picture 
of Mr. John D. Rockefeller with his one thousand million 
dollars and calls him: 

A “resistless force,” as he is destroying all competition, and 
says if he could live to the age of the patriarchs the United States 
would come to be merely one of his appurtenances. 

Will enlightened people submit blindly to this condition 
when they can legislate to remedy it? 

The Pittsburg Press, November 17, 1903, says about 
John D. Rockefeller: 

It. is quite credible that his aggregate fortune is not less than 
one thousand millions of dollars. This is more than 1,000 ordinary 
men could earn by ordinary honest toil in 1,000 years. Assuming 
they worked every day in the year and received pay at the rate of 
$2.75 a day. If we assume that the mar is without fault, do we 
not shift a large burden of proof upon our social or political 
system. 

From the New Yorlc American , January 15, 1904. 

“All who assail us are enemies of the business interests of the 
country,” cry the great corporations whenever it is sought to apply 






The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


19 


the law to them. You hear that from the coal corporations who 
snaps its fingers at Federal and State statutes and charges the people 
what it pleases for fuel. You hear the same thing from the food 
corporations which taxes as it chooses every table in the United 
States. You hear it from the oil corporation, which, like the other 
two, obeys no law save greed in the prices it exacts. These three 
corporations have absolute power over the cost of fuel, food and 
light, without which none can live. No pocket escapes their fingers. 
Each derives its power of extortion from monopoly—monopoly based 
on appropriation of natural resources, railroad discrimination and 
protective tariff. Each evades the law or openly defies it, whenever 
evasion or defiance is required in the way of business. The three 
have crushed out all competition and stand as towering golden monu¬ 
ments to the success of predatory lawlessness. Seek to crush them 
and the cry comes from them that the “business interests” are 
being attacked. 




20 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


Plaint of the Plutocrat,. 

I have bought everything I can buy; 

I have tried everything I can try; 

I have eaten each eatable, 

Beaten each beatable; 

I have eyed everything I can eye. 

I have sold everything I can sell; 

I have told everything I can tell; 

I have seized all the seizable, 
Squeezed all the squeezable, 

Till they’ve shelled everything they can shell. 

I have ridden each thing I can ride; 

I have hidden each thing I can hide; 

I have joked all the jokable, 

Soaked all the soakable; 

I have slid everywhere I can slide. 

I have walked everywhere I can walk; 

I have talked everywhere I could talk ; 

I have kissed all the kissable, 

Hissed all the hissable; 

I have balked everything I can balk. 

I have ersuhed everyone I could crush; 

I have hushed everyone I could hush; 

I have drunk every drinkable, 
Thought every thinkable; 

I have rushed everywhere I could rush. 

T have been every thing I can be, 

And the scheme of things will not agree ; 

I have spent all that’s spendable— 
Still its not endable. 

And I Mean it’s a bother to me. 


Pearson's Weekly. 





The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


21 


The American Autocratm 

From Pittsburg Dispatch , August 30, 1902 * 

In an appeal to President Roosevelt, the Public Alliance oE 
Wilkesbarre, Pa., complains that “Mr. Morgan has put a ban upon 
us which means universal ruin. Is he mightier than the Govern¬ 
ment? We appeal from the King of the Trusts to the President 
of the People.” Simultaneous we find the Washington Star, an 
ultra-conservative newspaper, stating that Morgan “does not fear 
political interference because he believes that finance has superceded 
politics and statecraft in power and influence in this country. Simi¬ 
lar questions and beliefs are being heard everywhere. It is diffi¬ 
cult to deny that an American autocrat has arisen, before wliohi 
President and people are alike powerless. Morgan’s acts are too 
convincing evidence of his own conviction to that effect. His feat 
in supporting the successful flotation of the most gigantic corpora¬ 
tion on record has perhaps led him to believe that his power is 
omnipotent, that nothing in the way of political reverses can effect 
the prosperity which he has ordained. Certainly nothing less than 
such an assumption can account for the deliberate failure to take 
warning from the ominous signs accompaning popular discussions 
of the strike, but it remains to be demonstrated whether one man 
can make or unmake the prosperity of this country, and the risk 
is too great to warrant the experiment. 


The Rich Are Pagans. 

Pittsburg Dispatch February 1, 1904. Pastor of Chi¬ 
cago Congregation makes stirring sermon. 

CHICAGO, January 31.—The Reverend Dr. James S. 
Stone of St. James Episcopal Church, the membership of 
which is largely of wealthy persons, in the course of the 
sermon to-day denounced the rich of Chicago. He s^id: 

“That there are multitudes in this city who neither fear God 
nor regard man is largely due to two causes. One the ignorance 
and weakness of many congregations, and the other the irreligion of 
our influential and well-to-do people. There are many exceptions, 



22 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


noble and praiseworthy for which we thank God, and take courage. 
But for the greater part the people of financial and social influence 
in Chicago—the people who could if they wmuld do so much for 
the salvation of the city, the people who are going to suffer the 
most in that terrible conflict between the classes that is threatening 
this country, the nearness of which seems apparent, and the centre 
of w 7 hich will be this very city, the end of which no man knows—■ 
these people w T ho should be the first in Christian example and in 
every good work are living the lives of pagans; nice pagans if you 
will, but as surely pagans.” 

The foregoing gives the reader an idea of the accumu¬ 
lation of wealth. We will now look at a few abject poverty 
statistics among the toilers. 

From the New York American, January 5, 1904: 

Whether a penniless man be worthy or unworthy, whether his 
poverty be due wholly to misfortune or partly to his faults, the cold 
chills his blood just the same. And hunger does not wait to ask 
about his virtues or want of them before assailing him. Bitter 
winter is here, and suffering human beings walk the streets day 
and night. Some are men who have been up and are capable of 
rising again. These need but a chance to get on their feet. Most 
of the sufferers would be glad to obtain work, and it is hardly worth 
while to waste indignation on those who would not, for certainly 
they are not being rewarded fotr their shiftlessness with a good 
time. Worthy or unworthy, capable or incapable, industrious, or 
the reverse, the penniless are in misery—horrible misery. Picture 
to yourself what it means to be abroad on the streets such nights 
as these with an empty stomach and empty pocket and clothing too 
scant to give warmth. It is for these the friendless poor, that this 
newspaper sends out nightly its coffee and sandwich wagons. 

In Pittsburg Dispatch , January 13, 1904 John R. Hen¬ 
dricks, at the meeting of the Allegheny Committee on Public 
Works, said: 

If the city will lay its own w r ater mains as it has done in 
past years, I can find enough of our Woods Run citizens who are 
out of work to fill a ditch a mile long. 

The Chronicle Telegaph , February 19, 1904, has an 
article headed: 






The Twentieth Ceivtury . 1 wakening. 


23 


Much suffering among the poor. The' severe winter produces a 
deplorable state of affairs in the tsvo cities. Much distress on 
the South Side. 

Although no strike of any consequence had been on, it 
is estimated by conservative men that not less than 30,000 
workers were idle in the Pittsburg district during last winter 
and early spring, incident and owing to the closing down 
of mills and works. This directly affected from 120,000 to 
150,000 people. Many thousand workers are still idle. Whai 
a pitiable commentary on our economic system, and what 
lamentable prosperity. “Tis true, tis pity and pity tis tis 
true.” 

Another Pittsburg Paper in February, 1904, says in 
headlines: 

Much misery in Woods Run. Scores of families in that dis¬ 
trict on the verge of starvation, and in the article says: In 
Pittsburg where there is so much wealth, and when business is not 
in a normal state so much opportunity for suffering, the saying 
that “one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives,” 
is true as in few other places. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
persons, many of whom have not known want heretofore, are 
deprived of even the necessaries of life, many being literally starv¬ 
ing. Heartrending stories are told of conditions which have been 
discovered in some houses in this district, these conditions being 
unknown in many cases even to the neighbors of those who were in 
want, many of whom not being in the habit of asking for assistance 
would not make their wants known. Miss O. F. Wickersham, 
superintendent of the Industrial Home said: “Our home has been 
established ten years, and at no time during this period have we 
seen so much suffering and want as during this winter. We found 
children who had been deprived of solid food so long that when 
bread was given them it made them sick. She also said that their 
funds were so low that they could only give one day’s employment 
each week to the poor women whom they could employ at 56c per 
day. 

Just think, 56c per week to keep a family on. Pneu¬ 
monia scarlet fever and diphtheria have prevailed throughout 
the district. 


24 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


From Pittsburg Dispatch, December 20, 1903: 

Garment Union starts war on sweatshops here. Finds twelve 
persons in one small room all making a total of $o.00 a week. In 
one back room on Wylie avenue 12 persons were found working on 
trousers. The room was small and served as kitchen, eating room, 
sleeping apartment—for nearly the entire 12—and workroom. The 
workers were of all ages; a woman was working at the machine, sev¬ 
eral others were sewing on garments, two men were pressing and 
three little children, tire oldest scarcely able to talk, were removing 
bastings and sewing on buttons. Similar conditions were found 
in other places. Whole families work in close foul-smelling, poorly- 
heated and lighted apartments. A whole family, mind you, including 
the children working from 10 to 14 hours a day, can finish about 
six dozen pairs of trousers per week. They get 90 cents a dozen fot 
this work in Pittsburg. Suicides are increasing in Pittsburg. 


Suicides Rapidly istcreasisig* 

Coroner McGeary Has Had 549 Cases of Persons Who Do 
Themselves to Death During His Term of Office. 

The number of suicides in Allegheny county is increasing. Since 
January 1, 1899, 549 cases have been reported. This year’s number 
is already 132. The total number of suicides during 1899 was 84; 
{luring 1900, 91; 1901, 124; and 1902, 118. With the exception of 
last year, there has been a steady yearly increase in the number 
of suicides during the past few years. There was a time when a 
suicide was looked upon as a sensational affair—now it is common¬ 
place. unless the person taking his life be prominent or the self- 
destruction be attended with unusual features. 

According to statistics presented by George P. Upton, of Chi¬ 
cago, the number of cases of suicides is rapidly increasing in the 
United States. ITe showed that in the past 13 years 77,617 people 
have committed suicide in this country—an average of nearly 6.009 
a year. It is further noted that during the 13 years there were 
41. suicides among physicians, which is more than the number ol' 
suicides of those belonging to any other profession. Previous to 
1894 most of the suicides were committed by the use of firearms, 
usually the revolver ; since that time most of the deaths have resulted 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


25 


from various poisons, carbolic acid being most frequently used.— 
American Medicine. 

Pittsburg’s Great Minister of the Gospel Reverend S. 
Edward Young, makes trade unions his theme: 

Rev. S. Edward Young, of the Second Presbyterian Church, 
preached on Trades Unions last night; many workingmen attended 
the services. The text was from Samuel 10 :26: “There went' with 
him a band of men whose hearts Cod has touched.’ He said in part: 

Peace and war in America are wrapt up in Trades Unionism. 
It is too late to ask whether Trades Unions ought to exist—first, 
because they do exist, without any present prospect of abolishment; 
second, because by common consent of the vast majoril y of mankind 
they have a right to be here. The only question now is, How b^st 
shall they serve their members and the general public? Organization, 
one man making nnother stronger—each man mightier for the thou 
«and who stand with him—there is oar key to power to-day. The 
world thinks in millions now. Anybody by himself will get trampled. 
Get enough clear-headed, clean-hearted men to carry your organiza¬ 
tion for the noblest ideals. Let your occupation be such as benefits 
humanity. If the work upon the whole does injury to your fellow 
man, out of it by to-morrow. Let your principles be squared with 
the ten commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Let your pur¬ 
poses be scrutinized as in the white light of the throne of God. Let 
your leaders be, nearly as you can make it so, each a Cincinnatus 
for wisdom, courage and self-effacement. Then shall Trades Union¬ 
ism rank in the great public mind among the most glorious factors 
in American life. 





26 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


Only a Laborer. 

Poem Written for Workingmen of Pittsburg, Labor Day, 1903. 
By Rev. S. Edward Young, Second Presbyterian Church. 

Mere laborer do they call him?—And yet he is a man; 

Quenchless burns his heart’s hope throughout this mortal span. 
Think you he sees no day dreams, yearns ne^er to be great, 

He and the thousands like him who rail not against fate? 

I swear his tides of sorrow breaks quite as whelming o’er, 

As surge those of the magnate who owns from shore to shore ; 

His pain to him, as poignant, his joy to him sublime, 

He to himself important as any son of time. 

The world one day must say it, confess it every where; 

We will to-day plead for it—then God shall hear our prayer. 

Mere laborer do they call him? —And yet he is a knight; 

Clad Cap-a-pie in work-gear he ventures to the fight— 

No tournament resplendent amidst applauding throngs, 

No deed mankind will herald or poets chant in song. 

Back yonder in plain cottage waits one, his lady true, 

Around her precious wee folks who naught themselves can do; 

He is their brave knight-errant; here is his Holy War, 

To feed, to clothe, to shelter—these whom he battles for. 

God speed him in the conflict! God help him hard blows bear ! 

We’ll cheer him, love him, greet him—then God shall hear our prayer 

Mere laborer do they call him?—And yet he is a king, 

What power his voting legions to the polling place might bring! 
There holds he not a scepfer?—that slip of paper white, 

His throne’s some thirty millions—each left foot and each right. 
Who dare in sl ; ghtest mandate this monarch disobey 
Should in compacted phalanx he all his hosts array? 

Dire hour of glopm and terror, dire land engulfed in blood 
If by our sloth or error his rage burst to its flood 1 
Lord, teach him patient wisdom; yea, we for him will care; 

We’ll help God just a little—then God shall hear our prayer. 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


27 


Miss Jane Adams, Hull House, Chicago, said in 1903, 
on child labor and pauperism: 

What connection do we find between pauperism and child labor? 
One of the first causes of pauperism is non-employment. Those who 
are first to lose their places in an industrial crisis are those who 
have never had sufficient training and who curiously lack strength 
and vigor. 

In our municipal lodging houses in Chicago, it is surprising 
to find how many tramps are tired to death with monotonous labor, 
and begin to tramp in order to get away from it. This inordinate 
desire to get away from work seems to be connected with the fact 
that men have started to work very early, before they had the 
physique to stand up to it, or the mental vigor with which to over* 
come its difficulties, or the moral stamina which makes a man stick 
to his work whether he likes it or not. But we cannot demand 
any of these things from a growing boy. A ooy grows restless, his 
determination breaks down and he runs away. At least this seems 
to be true of many of the men who come to the lodging house. An¬ 
other cause of pauperism is illness. A potent cause of disease is due 
to the breaking down of the organs which were subjected to abnor¬ 
mal uses before they were ready to bear it. I recall a tailor for 
whom the residents of Hull-House tried to get medical assistance. 
He died at the age of 33, and his death certificate bore the record 
of “premature senility” due to the fact that he had run a machine 
since he was six years old. It is no figment of the imagination to 
say that the human system breaks down when the body is put to 
monotonous work before it is ready to stand up to that work, and 
that general debility and many diseases may be traced to premature 
labor. No horse trainer would permit his colts to be so broken down. 

Then we have the pauperizing effect of child labor on the 
parents. Many of our European immigrants resent the monotonous 
petty labor of the factory, but their children become adapted to it, 
and you get the curious result of the parent of the Household being 
more or less dependent upon the earnings of the child. This tends 
to break down the moral relation between parent and child. 

The pauperization of society itself is another serious charge. 

When an industry depends upon the labor of boys and girls it 
takes them at a time when they ought to be in school. In almost 
all factories the work at which the children are employed leads to 
no trade. By the time they are old enough to.receive adult wages 
they are sick of the whole business. Such an industry is parasitic 
on the future of the community. We recall that when tne recruiting 
officers went into the factory regions of the North of England they 




28 


The Twentieth Century Awakening . 


found the bulk of the people below the standard in stature required 
in the English army. They were found especially dwarfed in that 
part of the country where the third generation recorded in their 
frames the effect of child labor. 

The gravest charge I have to bring against child labor is tM't 
it pauperizes the consumers. If I wear a garment which has been 
made in a sweat shop, or a garment for which the maker has not 
been paid a living wage—a. wage so small that her earnings had to 
be supplemented by the earnings of her husband and children, then 
I am in debt to the woman who made my cloak. 1 am a pauper and 
T permit myself to accept charity from the poorest people of the 
community. All that can be said against the parasitic character ol' 
sweating industries can be said against the parasitic character of 
child labor, with this difference, that the latter robs the assets of 
the community, it used up those resources which should have kept 
industry going on for many years. 

We may trace a connection between child labor and pauperism, 
not only for the child and his own family, bringing on premature old 
age and laying aside able-bodied .men and women in the noon-tide of 
their years; but also the grevious charge is true that it pauperizes 
the community itself. I should also add that it debauches our 
moral sentiment, it confuses our sense of values, so that we learn 
to think that a bale of cotton is more to be prized than a child prop¬ 
erly nourished, educated and prepared to take his place in life. Let 
us stand up to the obligations of our own age. juet us watch that we 
do not discount the future and cripple the next generation because 
we are too indolent. I was going to say because we are too dull, 
to see all that it involves when we use the labor of children. 


dipping From an Unknown Journal. 

Here is an apt summary of present conditions by a 
writer signed “Oliver”: 

The nineteenth century has been marked by a vast increase in 
productive power. The introduction of steam, the improved methods 
and processes of production and exchange, the numberless inventions 
and the grander scales of production have multiplied as with a 
magician’s wand, the effectiveness of human labor. 

At the commencement of this wonderful era it was expected 
that these new powers would ultimately improve the condition of 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


29 


all and make poverty more rare and confined to the improvident, 
vicious or ignorant. So powerful was the effect of these new powers 
upon the popular mind as to even change the currents of the thoughts 
and upset the most fundamental conception. Instead of gazing into 
the past to catch a faint glimpse of an expiring golden age, mer^ 
turn to look to the grand vista which the future now promised from 
the utilizing of these magical powers. The mistake was the most 
natural in the world, for should not the harnessing of the powers 
of nature and the solving of the secrets of science greatly benefit the 
whole race? Until the present time this faith in the progression of 
the masses towards better things has hardly weakened because there 
seemed to be so many things to which failure could be atributed. 
We have appreciated in a degree the difficulties but trusted that time 
would overcome them. 

It is now plain that the enormous increase in productive power 
that marked this century, and which is still going on at accelerated 
speed, has no tendency to abolish’ poverty or lighten the burdens of 
those compelled to toil. It merely widens the distance between the 
house of “Have” and the home of “Want” and intensifies the strug- 
gle for existence. In factories where machinery has reached th^ 
highest development, little children are at work, and amidst abun¬ 
dant wealth men die of starvation. 

The fact that poverty deepens with material pregress, constitutes 
the greatest enigma of our times. From it comes the clouds that 
overhang the future. From this central fact springs the difficulties 
that statesmanship, philanthropy and education have grappled with 
in vain. From this comes the crop of righteous discontent, which 
is everywhere apparent. It is the riddle which the Sphinx of fate 
puts to our modern civilization and which not to answer is to be 
destroyed. For as long as material progress operates to build up 
enormous fortunes and makes sharper the contest between Dives and 
Lazarus, our progress is not real and cannot long continue. The 
reaction must come. 

The great mill is absorbing the little mill; the big store is 
crushing out the little store, the great farm is absorbing the little 
iarm. A people who were landlords yesterday are tenants to-day. 
Along comes a new invention and the mechanic finds, like Othello, 
his occupation is gone. 

These conditions combined with the spread of ideas will prove 
irresistible. Orators and agitators do not produce them. There is a 
feeling abroad everywhere that we are on the eve of great changes. 
Thnt the present conditions are intolerable and connot last. 





30 


The Ttventieth Century Awakening, 


Competition of the American Workingman . 

Pittsburg Press, June 18, 1904. Human Ballast: 

The New York Journal of Commerce calculates that with the 
$10 steerage passenger rate now in operation the loss to the steam¬ 
ship company accepting it is $5 on every passenger. It’s an expen- 
pensive sort of dumping, from all points of view.— Exchange. 

If it is true that it costs the steamship companies $15 a head to 
transport the immigrants whom they are now fetenirg over at $10 
a head, it warrants the suspicion that the loss is being made good 
to the companies in a great majority of cases by the big corporations 
interested in securing cheap European labor. 

On the other hand it may not be true. A rate of $10 from 
Europe hither seems preposterously low; but it is to be remembered 
how disgracefully those paying this rate are huddled together and 
how difficult it would be to use this steerage room for any other 
purpose. 

The present class of immigrants are treated by the companies as 
ballast, that’s all; the ballast can be hauled at any late or no rate. 

Conditions painted by Lucinda B. Chandler in Eight 
Hour Herald, a few years ago, are more widespread and 
aggravated to-day because there are more employes and 
fewer employers: 


Are Americans Patriotic 9 

Loyalty to the Interests of the People, the Supreme Test—Wage 
Slavery and Chattel Slavery. 

Loyalty to the interests of the laborer is the supreme test of 
patriotism under any form of government, but espemally in a dem¬ 
ocratic republic. It is but wise selfishness in any people to promote 
the welfare of the producers of wealth. Chattle slavery recognized 
this fact and our black bondsmen were comfortably housed and 
clothed and fed, on the same principle that the farmers stock and 
draught animals are well cared for. The greatest amount of service 
can be obtained by keeping the body well supplied with vitality and 
working force. 

But in this country, which is proud of having freed the negro 






The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


31 


from ehattle slavery, a kind of slavery has come into existence in 
which the worker who has but his vitality, energy, muscle and ability 
to offer in the market is in no wise sure that he can provide himself 
with food, shelter and clothing. Fifty years ago beggary was almost 
unknown in this country. The helpless poor were rarely found. The 
modern mournful figure of our civilization, the tramp, was not 
evolved. 

In 1840 the farmers owmed 90 per cent, of the wealth of the 
country. At present they own 20 per cent., but pay 80 per cent, of 
the taxes. The statistics of 1890 show that, among 100 farm fami¬ 
lies, on the average 34 hire their farms—i. e., one-third of the cultiva- 
lors of the soil are tenants, 18 own with incumbrances; slaves to 
the mortgage fiend, and 47 without incumbrance. Not one-half of the 
people who produce the material without which all people would 
perish, have a right to a portion of the earth free from tax of 
landlord and money lender. The farmer is not forced to beg or 
starve, but the yoke of the oppressor bears heavily upon him. 

The necessity of passing laws against the importation of labor 
is a gauge of the patriotism of the capitalist. So exclusively has 
this factor of enterprise and production sought personal gain tb&t 
cheap labor has been to him a consideration far outweighing that 
of the welfare of the American citizen. 

Instead of the public spirit that is quickened by fraternal im¬ 
pulse seeking the greatest good of the greatest number, capitalism 
has sought mainly to gather individual profits and at the lowest pos¬ 
sible rates at which labor could be obtained from any quarter of 
the globe it has sought to make labor contribute to these profits. 
The same principle to subsist the worker on barely what will main¬ 
tain vitality and capacity to toil, that belonged to chattel slavery, 
has governed capitalistic employment. 

The only difference between the chattel slave and the slaves of 
the present competitive, credit-loaning and wage system is that the 
chattel was forced to toil and furnished with the bare necessities of 
life, while the w r age slave may choose to starve, tramp and accept 
charity or pauperism. 

When there are plenty of goods on the shelves that the ragged 
should wear the cry is over-production. Instead patriotism would 
ask why have not the ragged the means to supply themselves from 
these shelves? When the people beg for work they are told to keep 
off the grass. The gold reserve of the United Treasury is the chief 
concern of national financeering. Instead of promoting the general 
welfare by establishing public works that would benefit the country, 
give idle hands an opportunity to earn and increase the circulation 







32 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


of money, a mortgage is placed upon the vitality and labor of com¬ 
ing generations by issuing interest bearing bonds. 

Debt slavery is always the response of the government to the 
need of the people for opportunity .to work. 

The most helpless and defenceless class of the people, women 
and children, are most distressfully opressed by the operation of our 
unpatriotic and iniquitous economic systems. There is more real 
patriotism in the effort to protect the workers in the sweatshop than 
there is in speeches on the Monroe doctrine or appropriations for 
coast defences. 

While the needle and the sewing machine are instruments of 
slavery, torture and degradation, and of semi-starvation to thousands 
of women workers, the life of patriotism is threatened in its citadel 
in the hearts of despairing, enslaved womanhood. 

The following statement of a woman in an eastern metropolis 
is typical of a large class of sewing women, and yet by no means 
of the most aggravated and distressful condition of another large 
class. 

I have worked eleven years. I have tried five trades with my 
needle and machine. My shortest day has been 14 hours, for I had 
children and they had to be fed. It isn’t work that I have had any 
trouble in finding; it’s wages. 

Five years ago I could earn $1.50 a day, and we were com¬ 
fortable. Then it began to go down—$1.25, then $1. Then it 
stopped a while, and I got used to that, and could even get some 
remains of comfort out of it. I have to plan to the last cent. 

We went cold often, but we were never hungry. But then it 
fell to ninety cents, to eighty-five. 

For a year the best I could do I have not earned over 80 
cents a day, some times only seventy-five. I am sixty-two years 
old. I can’t learn new ways; I am strong. I was always strong. 
I run the machine fourteen hours a day with just the stoppings 
that have to be made to get the work ready. I’ve never asked a man 
alive for a penny beyond what my own hands can earn and I don't 
want to. 

I suppose the Lord knows what it all means. It is his world 
and his children in it; I have kept myself from going crazy many 
a time by saying it was his world and somehow it must all come 
right in the end. But I don’t believe it any more. He’s forgotten. 
There’s nothing left but men to grind the face of the poor, that 
chuckle when they find a new way to make a cent or two more 
a week out of starving women and children. I never thought 1 
should feel so—I don’t know myself. But I tell you I am ready for 
murder when I think of these men. 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


33 


If there’s no justice above it isn’t quite dead below; and if 
men with money will not heed, the men and women without money 
will rise some day. How, I don’t know. We’ve no time to plan, 
and we’re too tired to think, but it’s coming somehow, and I am 
not ashamed to say that I will join it if I live to see it come. IT'S 
SEAS OF TEARS THESE MEN SAIL ON. IT S OUR LIFE 
BLOOD THEY DRINK AND OUR FLESH THAx THEY EAT. 
God help them if the storm comes, for there will be no help in man. 

How many mothers have sent through their life-blood to the 
unborn child the murderous impulse uttered by this woman? A 
patriotism that has always been the heart-life and spontaneous devo¬ 
tion of the people must protect and promote the fundamental prin¬ 
ciples and essential genius of national existence. Equal opportunity 
to win subsistence is the inherent right of every human being. To 
protect and promote this right is the first obligation of this republic 
as it is the only guarantee of its safety and prosperity. 

The Pittsburg Press , February 12, 1904, pn Lincoln’s 
Birthday reflections says: 

Lincoln was democratic. Is the republic remaining so? Is 
the once popular conception that patriotism and higu personal char¬ 
acter determine only the high rank among us still widely held? 

Are the common people, of whom Lincoln typified so grandly the 
virtues and merits, still the predominant influence in the gov¬ 
ernment, the ruling class? Is it true that wealth has been en¬ 
croaching upon both our ideals and our practical administration, 
and that we are becoming that plutocracy that our critics call us? 

Destiny decreed that Abraham Lincoln should tower in history 
as the emancipator. Is his country and our country still the un¬ 
compromising advocate and exemplar of self-government, the world¬ 
wide champion of liberty, as well as the home of the free and refuge 
and blessing of the oppressed? 

According to Lincoln it was and is our destiny to see that 
government of the people by the people for the people should not 
perish from the earth. Is that the government which all Americans 
enjoy to-day, or is there a growing popular incapacity, a growing 
popular indifference, which makes it easy for base men among us 
to exploit government for their own unworthy ends? 

From a speech by Theodore J. Shaffer, President of the 
Amalgamated Association workers: 

If the mighty tyrant sitting on his golden throne in Wall street 




34 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


should descend to the humbler walks of life and grip the Amalga¬ 
mated Association by the throat and try to strangle it to death, 
other labor organizations would rise up and push the monster back 
and say: “You are mighty, but hold, he is our brother.” 

I have not been a philosophical student of the economic situa¬ 
tion, and have never posed as an interpreter ot tne economic princi¬ 
ples involved. My study has been from a workingman’s standpoint, 
and it is a workingman’s presentation I wish to make. 

We look about and see that while the original command to hu¬ 
manity that by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread is 
true; many men are unable to earn their bread, despite the fact 
that they are willing to do so. There are times when they are not 
permitted to fulfill the command. They cannot earn their bread be¬ 
cause they are not properly remunerated for their toil. 


WUBSng to Work, But Can't. 


We look around and see that there are times when it is ab¬ 
solutely impossible for a man to earn his living, or else that he 
^ does it under very unpropitious circumstances. Men are willing 
to labor. They are eager to find employment, which will improve 
them physically, mentally and morally, and they cannot get it. We 
find men, women and little children starving for want of the neces¬ 
saries of life. 

Why is this pitiable state of affairs? Is it because mother earth 
will not supply her children with what, they need? The clergy will 
tell you that it is because of the improvidence of the working peo¬ 
ple that they do not take care of their money. The prohibitionist 
will tell you that the trouble is caused by the workers too frequent 
use of ardent spirits. Others will say that the misery in the work? 
is due to the baleful influence of wars, pestilences and so on. All 
of these have something to do with the trouble, but they are not at 
the root of the matter. 

I want to state, and I think that the thinking people of this 
audience will bear me out in /that statement, that the principal trou¬ 
ble is that some men have too much of this world’s goods,, more than 
they could have earned honestly in a lifetime. 

Now speaking of our general conditions those who argue 
for the wealthy say that wages have advanced in proportion 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


35 


to the cost of living. Here is a 1904 article from the 
Brooklyn Eagle : 


No General Wage Advance. 

That there has not been a general advance in wages during the 
last few years is evidenced by the figures in the last annual report 
of the commissioner of labor of the United States. * * 

Another important point to be considered in this connection i. 
that during the last few days the Vanderbilt railway system has, in a 
spirit of retrenchment, discharged 2,500 men, thereby effecting a 
saving of $5,000 a day. This move, it is said, will be soon followed 
by all the big railroads. Announcement has been made that on the 
Southern Pacific Railway at least 1,200 men will be laid off and 
retrenchments are reported as likely to occur soon on other lines. 
Plans have already been made to cut down the working force of the 
United States Steel Corporation in an effort to raise the dividends 
and the stock prices. 

But while volumes of statistics have been prepared showing 
the wages and general condition of the working man, and while 
long columns of figures are printed giving the estimated wealth of 
the millionaires, one type of the American Citizens has been almost 
entirely neglected, so far as information concerning his life, hi's 
income and his expenditures is concerned. This is the great middle 
class—the salaried man, the fairly successful professional man ana 
the retail tradesman. In this class are the doctors, the lawyers, the 
clerks, the real estate dealers, and all men who are not included 
in the labor unions and have no means of backing up their claims 
for recognition except their own worth to their employers or their 
own ability to build up the business in which they are engaged. 
These men have not been favored in the last few years with an in¬ 
crease of income. On the contrary, many of their incomes have 
been reduced. Thousands of men getting salaries of $3,000 a year 
have been obliged to accept a reduction, and as in the case of the 
railroads, thousands have been dropped out of employment altogether. 

It is the people of this middle class that are among the greatest 
sufferers in the advance of food prices. The hotels, the apartment 
houses and the restaurants where they have been in the habit of 
living have all advanced their prices. And the bulk of the extra 
$2,052,000,000 that the big wholesalers demand must come out of 
their pockets. 




36 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


If the wealthy combinations and trusts could be com¬ 
pelled to carry out what they (the trusts) contend, namely 
that combination is a benefit to the general people because it 
cheapens the price of living in breadstuffs, and manufac¬ 
tured articles, then the trusts would be a blessing. But 
after our years of experience with them it would be saner 
to believe that the leopard will change his spots, than that 
the powerful arrogant combinations who sway our govern¬ 
ment at will, and are absolutely uncontrolled, will center 
their capital in any scheme for humanity sake, or for any 
other purpose than to extort all the money that the traffic 
will bear, and when any administration that draws its very 
life blood, bone and sinew from these barons of industry tells 
the American people that it alone can control them, the 
people should look backward through the over forty years 
that have each added to the power and tyranny of the 
favored rich, and added to and increased the number of the 
poor. No political party whatever its name, that is in the 
power and control of capital, will ever bring about a solu¬ 
tion of this great question. There is only one solution, and 
when the reader has read through this hook he will under¬ 
stand it, and it must be brought about by the people of this 
nation through the ballot and legislation. 

I will give a few newspaper editorials on the workings 
of the trusts. 

From New York World, March 23, 1904: 

The defense of the beef trust against the charge that it is a 
criminal combination is a denial of its own existence. Yet this 
phantom that is not substantial enough to be amenable to the laws 
has found itself able to raise the price of every pound of meat con- 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


37 


■urned in New York and Jersey City, and at the same time to keep 
down the prices received by the producers of the West. The beef 
combination is not only a trust, but the most odious of all trusts. 
It levies its toll on the food of the people. It deals in slow starva¬ 
tion. Tens of thousands of families eat less meat than they need, 
and when their health is sapped by under-nutrition the deaths that 
follow are due to starvation, just as certainly as if the end were 
reached in a week instead of years. The beef trust owns the West¬ 
ern stock yards, the packing houses, the refrigerator car lines and 
the cold storage warehouses. It boycotts every butcher who does 
not give it the monopoly of his trade. It determines from day to 
day just what the producer shall receive for hi* cattle. 


High Cost of Living. 

From the Pittsburg Press, May 16, 1904: 

The high prices for living, to which renewed attention has been 
directed by the latest bulletin issued at Washington by the Depart¬ 
ment of Commerce and Labor, are bitter reality to hundreds of 
thousands of people. The millionaire may not be sensible of them, 
but they cause many an anxious moment to the average house¬ 
holder. An exchange which has given the matter some investigation 
declares that some singular instances of “suffering” among appar¬ 
ently very well off people have been brought to light, not the least 
singular being one where, a family occupying a first-class house in a 
first-class location have lived all winter without servants for carry¬ 
ing on the domestic service of the establishment, beyond the chore 
man who took care of the furnaces. Other cases snow to what ex¬ 
tremity the trusts have brought the small housenolder, when, In 
order to make wages and expenses meet, food is ceasing to be 
nutritious and wholesome. The pinch must come somewhere, and 
naturally the larder is first to suffer, then the families appearance, 
with all extras for outings and recreations absolutely cut off. If 
the wage-reduction movement persists (and it appears to have been 
acquiesced in by both employers and employees as a necessity in 
many industries) the cost of living is liable to become an issue in 
the Presidential campaign. 

To the fierce race for wealth in the United States is 
directly traceable most of the appalling loss of life in recent 




38 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


years. The railroads and trolley lines annually kill thou¬ 
sands of people because it costs more money to hire skilled 
men, and give them reasonable time shifts, than to hire 
the average run of men, and work them overtime 
until endurance gives out, and no life-saving appliance 
is used that they can legally evade, because it 
costs money; track crossings are not guarded where they can 
possibly avoid it. Compare our casualties to European casu¬ 
alties on transit lines. Our railroads kill one person yearly 
out of each 8,000. In England only one in each 60,000. 
They take more care there. The steamboat companies do 
likewise, evade all the cost of normal security to make all 
the money they can. Worthless life-preservers, lifeboats 
inadequate and not enougn of crew to man them; the fire 
hose rotten and worthless, falling apart when put to use; 
result in one accident alone, one thousand human beings 
burned and drowned! Buildings are put up so frail to save 
money that frequently the story is heralded, building col¬ 
lapsed ! So many killed! Theaters are occupied before 
they are finished regardless of the law for safety, in order to 
make money quick, and over five hundred people are burned. 
We see it all around us. What other things does a govern¬ 
ment subsidized by wealth, permit, I will cite only three 
instances among the Thousands. 

Joseph Creelman, in the New York World, after ex¬ 
haustive investigation, figures that the promoters of the 
steel trust placed on the market the gigantic sum of one billion 
three hundred and twenty-two million dollars in stocks and 
bonds, when they had assets aggregating only four hundred 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


39 


and thirty-four millions, thus doing the people out of eight 
hundred and eighty-eight million dollars by watered stock. 
Many steel workers being prevailed upon to buy preferred 
stock at $80 per share, that fell to less than $50. Then the 
Shipbuilding Combination, capitalized at seventy-seven mi - 
lion dollars, while seven out of the eight plants sold for 
less than three million dollars. Also the Amalgamated 
Copper manipulation, exposed by Mr. Lawson in Frenzied 
Finance, all help to prove that with wealth unlimited, peo¬ 
ple ^ become crazed in the fierce unbridled race for treasure 
and it would be the height of sanity to curb it; furthermore, 
if there is no punishment possible for the perpetrators of 
such a colossal manipulation, which caused wide-spread pov¬ 
erty, and disaster among thousands of the middle class, and 
poor workingmen, bringing in its trail widespread grief, 
despair, crime and suicide. Burely if these monsters that 
caused this condition can go unpunished, our modern civili¬ 
zation and law, is mainly in the interest of the sharper, and 
fair play would demand the opening of all our prison doors 
to let out the small malefactors as injured innocents. And 
those newspapers of the nation that have in the past boomed 
and misrepresented to the confiding public those monstrous 
speculations with their watered assets, and that are even now 
engaged in misrepresenting actual conditions among the peo¬ 
ple in order to lure the public again into these fictitious 
investments, are the hireling agents of these cormorants, 
while posing as public sentinels of honesty and rectitude. 
Ah ! Money is indeed powerful when it can prostitute our 
national educators in their province of honor and purity. 

From the foregoing up to date facts of the general condi- 



40 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


tion of the masses of toilers, contrasted to the very rich. 
What a hollow mockery it is in the name of humanity and 
of God, to hear some preachers of the gospel of Christianity, 
calmly sanctioning the horrible conditions of human inequal¬ 
ity, of extreme—out of employment—poverty, and excessive 
riches. Calmly asserting in their own well fed and well 
clothed condition, that the woeful heartrending miseries of 
the poor human beings is God’s will! Horror! To attri¬ 
bute man’s inhumanity to man to a just God! How can they 
claim the God they preach of is just. What the toilers want 
is comfort and happiness in this wtorld, they will be better 
able and tit to meet their God. Many men are happy if they 
only have regular work and wage. And are nearer to Christ 
who said: “Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me 
with food convenient for me.” 

Many men and women have lost all patience with the 
poor toilers, having done so much for the poor that they 
received little thanks for, and oftentimes abuse or injury 
for kindness. That is all the more reason for renewed energy 
to improve the conditions of our brothers and sisters, who 
through the kicks and cuffs, their misfortunes, and the wrongs 
of time, have had their finer natures perverted, warped and 
ground down, until they are stunted and dwarfed in intellect 
and affection, Man’s inhumanity to man has calloused them, 
Man’s justice to man must reclaim and remodel them. God 
pity the pqor fool! is the verdict of the careless world, and of 
those that are happy for the hour, against the reformer or 
would be helper of the poor and unfortunate. The rich is 
the side to fight on, they say! there lies the gain in all that 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


41 


is worldly and worth having! I look into the night sky. A 
bright star I see, another snn or planet, there are millions 
of them! they are God’s handwork! So is mankind! more 
wonderful than riches. More worthy of effort to work for, 
to better their condition. Idols must be swept away. 

Manhood and womanhood must be revealed, redeemed, 
must endure and triumph, open a way for all mankind to 
have constant work and wage. Richei will be plentiful as 
the stars of the firmament, or like the sands of the ocean, 
enough and plenty for all. 

Paternalism has always in all ages, by past, and by pres¬ 
ent governments, been practiced only in the interest of those 
that have. Whereas according to nature, it should be applied 
equitably to the weak and the strong, Nature provides food 
and sustenance for the weak through the strong. Why 
should not humanity make the strong in worldly wealth, give 
work and wage to the weak in worldly wealth. That is what 
I am trying to impress on the reader, lhe government is 
the ruler of the national condition, and should be equitable 
to the majority of the people that form that government. 

The competitive system is all right if we have proper 
adjustment, As practiced Now it is simply—MIGHT OVER 
RIGHT—Proper adjustment of condition is when the gov¬ 
ernment assists the weak, and makes the strong obey the laws 
that prevent the oppression of the weak, it is all wrong 
when the government practices paternalism toward the rich, 
and lets the poor suffer. We can probably never entirely 
stop the former, but we can remedy the latter. The toiling 
masses are far in the majority, and by united effort they 
can bring about, if necessary, an amendment to the constitu- 



42 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


tion of the United States, placing on wealth, NOT AN 
INCOME TAX THAT CAN BE EVADED! but a special 
employment tax based on net value of all kinds, subject to 
investigation and appraisement by a United States tax com¬ 
mission for each district of the nation, to be elected by the 
people or appointed by the President of the United States— 
that has power to demand and examine, witnesses, books 
and papers, and bring delinquents to Justice with a heavy 
penalty attached for evasions. 


Tax Commission Necessary. 

We must have a tax commission of three for each dis¬ 
trict, because the present system of taxation in the nation is 
all wrong—as almost every assessor can tell you—one assessor 
for each town, ward or even portion of a ward, is subject to 
influence, and intimidation of the rich or well to do, he is 
only one man, and while he has powers, they are rarely uti¬ 
lized, rather than have trouble if he is an honest man, he 
takes the word of the average citizen as to his worth in assess¬ 
able property, saying to himself—they all do it—when a man 
worth one hundred thousand dollars only lists fifty thousand, 
or when a man worth one million dollars, lists one hundred 
thousand, or only one-tenth of his worth in worldly goods, He 
(the assessor) don't know, can't see into his heart if he (the 
citizen) is telling or swearing to the truth or not. He is not 
paid for taking the trouble to find out, and he may ease his 
conscience by saying, Well this man may be overestimated 
by the world (as many are) and that may be his net worth, 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


43 


so he hands in the lists feeling, but not knowing it is wrong. 
The dishonest assessor merely winks at the rich man’s report, 
well knowing that wealth has power to keep him in place. 
The assessor always gets all in his report that the poor man 
has, because it is all in sight, so the rich are fevored, while 
the poor man is taxed in full, whereas he is really entitled to 
a rebate for the rich man’s exemptions. 

Tax Should Be Regulated . 


The tax should be regulated to produce the amount 
necessary. It should be very light on those that have small 
means, and should be graded upward, per the following (con¬ 
jectural) table. Begin with all those worth one thousand 
dollars estimating our population at Ninety Millions people, 
and our wealth at one hundred billions of dollars, as our 


financiers claim. 



Taxable 

Net W’tb 

Mill 

Yearly 

Persons 

Each. 

Tax. 

Tax. 

10,000,000 

$1,000 

one mill 

1.00 

5,000.000 

$2,000 

“ 1-10 mill 

2.20 

3,000,000 

$3,000 

“ 2-10 mill 

3.60 

3,000,000 

$4,000 

“ 3-10 mill 

5.20 

2,000,000 

$5,000 

“ 4-10 mill 

7.00 

And 

so on gradually upwards. 


Total 

Tax. 

10,000,000 

11,000,000 

10,800,000 

15,600,000 

14,000,000 


Total 

Valuation. 

10,000,000,000 

10,000,000,000 

9,000,000,000 

12,000,000,000 

10,000,000,000 


I will now make aver- 


each $1,000 of value. 


Taxable 

Net W’th 

Mill 

Persons 

Each. 

Tax. 

1,000,000 

$ 11,000 

2 

mill 

500,000 

$ 21,000 

3 

mill 

250,000 

$ 31,000 

4 

mill 

100,000 

$ 41,000 

5 

mill 

50,000 

$ 51,000 

6 

mill 

20,000 

$ 91,000 

10 

mill 

10,000 

$191,000 

20 

mill 

1,000 

$500,000 

59 

mill 

24,931,000 





Yearly 
Tax. 
22.00 
63.00 
124 00 
205.00 
306.00 
910.00 
3,820.00 
25,450.00 


Total 

Tax. 

22 , 000,000 

32,500,000 

31,000,000 

20,500,000 

15,300,000 

18,200,000 

38,200,000 

25,450,000 


Total 

Valuation. 

11,000,000,000 

10,500,000,000 

7,750,000,000 

4,100,000,000 

2,550,000,000 

1,820,000,000 

1,910,000,000 

500,000,000 


$264,550,000 $91,130,000,000 






44 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


This millage would decrease in time, as fewer persons 
would seek government employment owing to their improved 
conditions. 

Thus from twenty-five millions of taxable people, the 
sum of over two hundred and sixty million dollars could be 
raised annually which would give employment to over Four 
Hundred thousand persons (more than the nation normally 
has idle) at $600 per annum. If we have five hundred 
actual millionaires in the nation, it would cost them 10 9-10 
per cent, or $109,000 tax .yearly, if they remained in the 
country or did not divide their wealth among their kin. Mr. 
Carnegie, with his five hundred millions; Mr John D. 
Rockefeller with his one thousand millions, and the hundred 
or so other multi-millionaires, would have to divide up their 
wealth with their kin, or take it away to other nations (and 
there pay an income tax on it) as this taxation here would 
confiscate in. taxes all but a portion of their great fortunes, 
but even if they could only retain one-half a million d/ollars 
for each person profitably, that would be enough for anyone, 
when we stop tjo think how few people attain even that ple¬ 
thoric condition, and view what frightful conditions unlim¬ 
ited wealth produces among the human race. 

WouBd Take MiHionSares From AnteHoam 

Supposing this plan would take away the millionaires 
from America, and their fortunes with them! where could 
capital find a better field for exploitation than the resources 
of America? and how could they grind labor down in any 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


45 


other quarter of the gh>be when America vouchsafes work to 
every willing person at living wages? but even if all the 
millionaires and multi-millionaires would go, America would 
only lose about two thousand people, and five or ten thou¬ 
sand millions in wealth, that amount taken from our one 
hundred thousand millions of dpllars in wealth would be the 
concentrated dangerous part—dangerous for cornering up 
the markets on all living necessaries, while what remained 
would be widely distributed, and subject to a moderate taxa¬ 
tion for humane and beneficial purposes under this plan. 
But I do not believe if this plan were put into operation 
that the capitalists would leave America. There would be 
more of a tendency for the rich families to divide up their 
fortunes among the grown children while me parents are 
living, which would be a good distributive feature, instead of 
doing as now, waiting until after death to see how great 
a fortune in the aggregate they can leave behind. It is 
altogether unnnecessary for the welfare of mankind, and it 
is distinctively dangerous for mankind, for a small number 
of persons to become possessed of such colossal wealth that 
they can sway governments! The taxation of wealth to give 
idle people employment would limit wealth and prevent future 
excessive individual fortunes, but what hardship is that to 
humanity? none whatever. 

A Regular Tax Institution. 

Favored ones would still be rich enough for all purposes, 
while no one would suffer poverty. Just think how little 
harm it would do to the small number of very rich, and how 



46 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


much good to the mass of toilers who need steady employ¬ 
ment. As it is now, in time of panic and depression, those 
that have, must give to those that have not, or they that 
have not must starve and die. Why not make it a regular 
tax institution, and do away with the panic and depression. 
Some will contend that it would check progress in grand 
building and other enterprises. On the contrary, the govern¬ 
ment would take a hand in that and some of the greatest 
improvement schemes ever dreamt of would become realities, 
tor every man worth from $1,000 up would be an enforced 
contributor, and every now idle man would work to consum¬ 
mate it for regular wages. The rich would then be more 
liberal too, and give more work to artist and mechanic, djoo 
much wealth, too much tax, they would say. Distribution 
of benefits would result, instead of as npw,everything tending 
to concentration and monopoly for the few, and poverty for 
the many. 

It may be contended that if the Government gives em¬ 
ployment to all idle men, it will operate in favor of the work¬ 
ingmen and against the manufacturers in case of industrial 
strikes as the strikers can work for the Government during 
the period they are out on a strike, thereby making 1 the manu¬ 
facturer, mine operator, or other employer accede to their 
demands, but when we consider that the wage to be paid by 
the Government shall be based only on the plan of giving just 
enough to insure comfortable living, and in line with what the 
Government is paying now to its employes. It is not likely 
that men who earned higher wages elsewhere would perma¬ 
nently seek Government employment, at any rate they could 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


47 


not be away working for the Government, and at the same 
time prevent other men from taking the places they have 
vacated. The object of this tax shall be primarily to give all 
persons work that cannot find work in the other channels at 
better wages. The commercial and mechanical business 
'would lose no workers if they gave fair wages. It should be 
the object of the government to grade the wages and hours of 
employment to give only proper sustenance and comfort to 
the workers. No high priced salaries to make it an incentive 
for people to abandon other employment. It must simply be 
a sheet anchor of hope that all can work at all times. The 
tax money should flow to the national treasury, to the proper 
department (under the new secretary of labor and commerce, 
would be appropriate) and should be available for all public 
improvements. Building of the Panama Canal, Irrigating 
arid lands of the west, developing National Parks, building 
of canals from lakes to the rivers, deepening of th 3 Ohio river 
to the sea, keeping in bounds the Mississippi river, improving 
harbors, propagation of the forests, building and maintaining 
of hospitals and homes for the feeble and aged, building of 
good roads, and in fact as far as it goes, can be devoted to 
the vast improvement and beautifying of our nation. We 
are a nation of phenomenal resources. 


Labor Produces All Wealth. 

Because in the past we have by our system placed 
capital in the hands of the few, therefore labor only profits 
in wage while employed. Steady employment is not guaran- 



48 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


teed. A toiler can starve before our eyes, and there is no 
law to compel any one to give him work to keep him alive. 
Capital now gets the cream, bnt if we tax capital to ensure 
men constant work, that will be equity and regulate matters. 

By assured employment always open for any man or 
woman, and a too some extent diversity of employment, as 
the government under the proposed plan can olfer. Humanity 
will not get discouraged or despair. Contentment will be the 
rule. 

My method, if adopted, would weld all the toilers of the 
nation into a labor union that would be part, and parcel of 
our government, without labor being arrayed against labor as 
it is now. Now, the wealthy manufacturers, not being lim¬ 
ited by the taxation I propose, are naturally crowding down 
or annihilating the smaller concerns, and are exulting in it, 
forgetting, or not caring, that the others must live also. 

Will Tax Provident to Help Improvident. 

Some dissenters from my methods will say, that it would 
unjustly tax the provident to help the improvident. But 
if they will stop to consider that the improvident are the 
distributors, and are the ones that by their prodigality enable 
the provident to accumulate, they will recognize the fact, 
that if the improvident are continuously employed they will 
continuously distribute, and if they continuously earn wages 
and spend them, it will enable the savers to save more regu¬ 
larly and permanently even until they reach the limit at which 
taxation will absorb the income. Therefore the hoarders should 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


49 


consider it a good business investment to pay a tax yearly to 
keep all men employed aside from the humanity of it. 

We must bear in mind also that if we were all savers 
and hoarders but very few could get rich. On the question 
of how labor has produced all wealth, volumes have been 
written, and could be written to prove that that is true and 
no one that is at all informed can deny it, therefore when 
we look upon a millionaire we know his wealth has been pro¬ 
duced by the labor, sweat, arid hardship of thousands—for 
some kinds of labor men are compelled to do for a living 
is a hardship—and yet many of the rich think they are of 
superior clay, when in reality they are only fortunates, and 
under our present unequal system. 


Really Leeches Upon the Toilers. 

Why should these toilers be stopped and their very 
existence threatened when the capitalist chooses to suspend 
the work? The toilers only get barely a living while they 
work steadily arid enable the capitalist to accumulate his 
fortune, and why should the wealthy not pay a tax to give 
these men constant work, while thb capitalists are reaping 
the benefit of the workers’ toil above the living wages paid. 

That capital is necessary to build mills, factories and a 
thousand other things to employ men in is granted, that the 
mills, factories and a thousand other things can be built and 
run by a number of men with a few hundred or a few thou¬ 
sands dollars each, thereby making the distribution greater, 
instead of being built and owned by two or three millionaires. 



50 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


must be conceded, for it has been done before there were any 
millionaires and is still being done, though less and less every 
year, because unlimited wealth is cutting them down and 
reducing the small manufacturers and dealers to the ranks 
of the already overcrowded employes. That it is right, 
proper, and elevating for people to strive to better their con¬ 
dition and rise from poverty to affluence - cannot be denied, 
but that the fortunates should be permitted to go on to 
unlimited wealth, until a few men own the wealth of a nation, 
dominating our Congress, our legislature, our judiciary and 
our municipalities has proven demoralizing. That the few 
should prosper and the many should suffer is inhuman, 
ungodly and an uncivilized condition. I would rather have 
a condition of millions of small fortunes among millions of 
people, than a thousand large fortunes among a thousand 
financial kings who are not responsible to the people, whether 
they work or starve. The former conditions would be real 
and distributive prosperity, the latter condition is proving 
to be financial despotism. 

Contented! and Prosperous Nation m 

What a happy, contented and prosperous nation this 
would be, if every man and woman that needs it could get 
work and wage constantly and without fail? How much of 
suffering, heartache and despair would be eliminated! What 
dread is greater and more terrible to the thousands of honest 
toilers, than the dread of being thrown out of employment, 
with the attendant hardship on the loved ones at home? If 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


51 


the workers will band together to limit wealth by taxation 
as I propose, the gigantic fortunes will disappear it is true. 
The trusts will totter and fall, but in their stead thousands, 
yes millions, of small proprietors will spring up with their 
wide distributive benefits, indivdual effort will again avail, 
and the natural law of supply and demand will rid itself of 
the financial octopus clutch that now obstructs it at will and 
will again operate normally. It is a very mistaken assump¬ 
tion to contend that we must have millionaires. The world 
has progressed for ages without them, and when we stop to 
consider the harm that concentration of wealth is doing, we 
should change our economic system so as to make it impos¬ 
sible for any one to become so vastly wealthy. Then if a man 
should be fortunate enough to accumulate half a million 
dollars, the tax would virtually take his income, and he w<ould 
have to retire. That would open the way for his son, or any 
relative to step in his place, or if he has no relation, some 
friend would be the gainer. This would bring about a wide 
distributive feature, that would add to the prosperity and 
happiness of humanity in general. low a multi-millionaire 
is not satisfied, he is constantly striving for more, he never 
has enough, there is no limit, he forgets most all his kin— 
except his immediate family—and fiercely contends for 
greater wealth, the more he gets, the more jealously he 
guards it, he becomes calloused to humanity and nature’s 
God! He worships at only one shrine and that is Wealth. 



52 


The Twentieth Oentury Awakening. 


Philosophy of Employment Tax. Plan « 

The philosophy of this employment tax plan is this, the 
persons worth from one to thirty thousand dollars net, would 
have a comparatively reasonable tax to pay, and as they are 
vastly in the majority compared to the more wealthy peo¬ 
ple of the nation, they would be the greatest number to 
bear the burden, but as that is true, so is it also true that 
they are nearly all workers or small business men, as workers 
they ensure themselves constant employment by the tax they 
pay, and as business or professional men they ensure them¬ 
selves against credit carrying men and families out of employ¬ 
ment, and are consequently doing a more thriving business 
because all workers are employed. 

The method of this tax should be, to exact payment from 
every individual if he or she has the net taxable possession 
in the nation whether resident or non-resident, corporations 
should not be taxed as corporations, but the individual mem¬ 
bers of all corporations should be taxed. This would result 
in a larger number of people owning shares m paying corpora¬ 
tions, and make corporations more co-operative than monop¬ 
olistic, for instance, now, the paying corportions are owned 
less and less by the general people, and more and more by 
the capitalists. No matter under what pretext, small hold¬ 
ers of stock are as a rule frozen out, so that the capitalists 
can have control 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


53 


Apply My Method of Taxation to Wealth 

and the many small stockholders can make money while the 
very large stockholders are taxed out of part of their divi¬ 
dends. This may appear unjust at first thought, but on sec¬ 
ond thought it will be perceived that it only hurts the few 
slightly, where they can endure it, and it helps the many 
materially where they need it. And it appears to me that 
the object of the economist should always be, the greatest 
good to the greatest number—that can be practically main¬ 
tained. Then, as the shares of a paying corporation would 
have a wide distribution among a great number of small 
shareholders, the dividends would also be widely distributed, 
and the public would also be to a large extent patronizing its 
own investments, thereby bridging over its expenditures by 
its receipts. Now a good thing in the investment line, is 
gobbled up by a few capitalists, even after the public has initi- 
ated it, and the public is cut out of the benefits and profits 
by the power of unrestricted wealth. The nation, thej, 
States and the municipalities are cowdring under unre¬ 
stricted unlimited wealth, normal self government cannot; 
proceed purely and regularly in the interest of the common: 
people with a thousand financial kings each seeking his own' 
gluttonous aggrandizement. Franchises, and powers of the 
general people that should be beneficial and remunerative to 
the public at large, are bought up by these money kings 
through corrupt people’s representatives, placed in office by 
the wealth of these potentates, and these privileges are made 
burdens, where they should be blessings. Indeed so many 





The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


54 


and so widespread are the gross abuses of unlimited wealth, 
that it would take volumes on the subject to record it, but 
one of its most hideous phases is that it is quenching Mother 
and Father love, brother and sister love, it has calloused the 
rich heart against the poor, and is sapping the very founda¬ 
tion of Christianity. 

Ambition and aspiration will always—while life lasts— 
remain to lead the venturesome into higher walks and wider 
channels for employment. 

With a wide and proper understanding of this system of 
improvement, the people should not only bring it about, but 
being so simple, and so far reaching in its good result and so 
trivial in its bad effect on those that have wealth. It should 
only be a wonder it was not done ages ago and much sorrow 
and suffering avoided. 

It may be urged that an influx of undesirable foreign 
immigration would swamp us under this system, but I will 
contend that Europe could and would follow our example 
in order to hold her people, while Asia, Africa and Australia 
can be restricted as to numbers or desirability of their im¬ 
migrants. However, the greater a number of eligible people 
we can receive, the more powerful we would become as a 
nation, and the greater will be the benefit to the human race. 

The labor unions can help mightily to make this condi¬ 
tion possible. The toiler is the monarch of his own destiny 
wherever he enjoys the voting power. 

The very rich will oppose the placing of this tax, but 
they will be happier for it when they see the good humane 
results. When hideous poverty will be abolished, and all 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


55 


men and women will have work, the world will he beautified 
by their labors to make it a happier dwelling piece. 

In times of war when the government employs many 
*ie», times commercially, are always good. If this tax were 
placed and the government employed many men and women 
in many peaceful occupations what a wonderful change it 
would make, any money paid to labor brings its reward to 
the nation many fold and keeps in circulation. The work 
done for the nation would be permanent wealth. 

The physical necessities must be furnished before the 
intellectual needs. We must first live, then learn. Work 
and wage are more important to men and women than learn¬ 
ing, for without the former we would not be able to enjoy 
the latter. Yet the community furnishes schools, but makes 
no provision for giving employment. 

Children .should be compelled to go to school until 15 
years of age. When boys and girls should be eligible for 
employment elsewhere or by the government in lighter occu¬ 
pations. Clerical for women, and messenger, and other light 
work for boys until they get older. Men should be employed 
in the heavier work. 

Each widow of government employe without resources 
(subject to investigation) should draw a pension from this 
fund sufficient to support any children going to school. So 
much for each child, pension to stop when children become 
15 years of age. Children’s wages up to their majority 
should be first payable to parents if demanded, unless parents 
should become disqualified by intemperance, or by not main¬ 
taining a comfortable home. Every man or woman over 65 


LofC. 



56 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


years of age if they have been in the government employ 5 
years and have no resources sufficient, should be eligible to 
entrance and support at some old people’s home founded and 
supported by this fund. Life and accident insurance should 
be compulsory with each employe of the government, and if 
insured is a resident of and supported by the old people’s 
home, the policy at death should be paid into the fund for 
the support of the home. Otherwise if the insured is self- 
supporting, or maintained by his relatives, the policy to be 
paid to his heirs. 

Secretary Shaw of the United States Treasury said in 
his speech September 3, 1903: 

The annual productive capacity of the American people is eleven 
thousand miliioms of dollars (or $157.14 for each inhabitant of seventy 
millions). He says we are the most prosperous people in the world, 
because we both produce and consume more than others. The little 
we sell abroad, about 10 per cent, of our net production, and the 
little we purchase abroad, about 6 or 7 per cent, of our net consump¬ 
tion, constitutes no challenge to the statement that our prosperity 
rests with ourselves. 

Thus it is clearly shown that even with a certain propor¬ 
tion of workers out of employment, our power to produce is 
in excess of our needs, and if all men and vpomen could 
obtain work at all times, if wisely arranged by humanity 
in the interest of humanity, we could tide over all drouths 
or similar calamities. But if we allow only a favored few to 
gather in the surplus without taxing them equitably to pro¬ 
tect and give work to the toilers, poverty with all its agony 
must be the result of our unwise course to many. 

Now my friends in conclusion I will say, “We Are Our 
Brother’s Keepers.” Every man and woman (and their inno- 




The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


57 


cent little children) that are suffering in want and poverty 
amidst plenty, owing to being out of employment—when it 
can be provided—is our concern. We are guilty of their 
condition, they are our brothers and sisters. When we look 
upon the misery of the world we should feel guilty, he we 
moderately well to do, rich or poor. We are guilty! There 
is a remedy! Will the people use it! I hope so. Delay 
means more misery, suffering and death ! 

THE LITTLE CRINGING AMERICAN WILL BE 
CONTENT TO SERVE UNDER THE TYRANNY OF 
CAPITAL. THE BIG COURAGEOUS AMERICAN 
WILL, LIKE THE HEROES OF 1776, THROW OFF 
THE YOKE OF THE OPPRESSOR AND ABOLISH 
THIS INJUSTICE TO THE TOILER. 

ERNEST A. HORNBERGER. 

Pittsburg, Pa., July 4th, 1904. 




58 


The Twentieth O+ntury Awakening. 


Plenty of Work to Do at Home* 

Thomas J. Adams, in Chronicle Telegraph , January, 
1904: 

More than 1,000 men, women and children were killed, and 
more than 50,000 persons made homeless by disastrous, uncontrolled 
floods in the United States during the last year alone. The property 
losses were more than $100,000,000. These appalling losses are 
suffered because the rivers and water-ways within tne United States 
are shamefully neglected by the government. It is the plain duty of 
the government of the United States to energetically make the im¬ 
provements necessary to control the rivers and waterways and save 
the lives and property of its citizens. 

Is there any excuse whatever for further neglect and losses 
of lives and property from this cause in the United States, now that 
the government strenuously proposes to take several hundred mil¬ 
lion dollars of public money from the people of the United States* 
in a spectacular attempt to make river, harbor and canal improve¬ 
ments in a far-off foreign country? 

Who can estimate the losses of lives and property resulting 
directly from the continued neglect of the government to make these 
absolutely necessary improvements at home in the United States? 
Why should the people of the United States be taxed for extravagant 
improvements in a distant foreign country? Not a single inhabitant 
of the United States will die for want of the foreign and far-off 
Panama Canal. 

The government now needs all its money at home to make 

the improvements necessary to save the lives and property of its 

citizens and to improve the United States to the standard of other 
civilized countries. 

Why should the United States be neglected and become a secon¬ 
dary consideration? 

A sermon from the South Seas. Taken from the 
New York American , July 2, 1903: 

New Zealand, in area only a seventh less than that of Great 

Britain and Ireland, 1,000 miles in length, with over three 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


59 


thousand miles of coast line, is giving the rest of the world some 
pointers in the line of twentieth century politics and economics. In 
New Zealand municipal ownership of public utilities is no longer 
a mere theory; it is an established fact. And from all accounts it 
works splendidly. Dr. J. M. Peebles, just returned from the won¬ 
derful country in the South Seas, says: “I have to say without the 
least mental reservation, that New Zealand is the most prosperous 
country I have ever seen. It is the most liberal-minded, fraternal- 
spirited, thrifty and advanced country in the world. I say it with 
all due admiration and patriotic love for my native New lEngland. 
The New Zealand government owns all the unsettled lands, hence 
there are no great land syndicates. The unimproved land of land- 
owners is taxed. The government loans money to actual settlers 
at a low rate of interest. The state owned railroads, telegraphy, 
telephones, etc. I unhesitatingly affirm they are at least 50 year* 
ahead of those of the United States and England.” New Zealand 
without strikes, trusts, or beggars, is certainly an alluring picture. 








60 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


Why not have justice and compensation On earth when it 
is within mankind’s reach to attain it. 


Compensation . 

There’s a chorus afloat in the air to-night, 

A song for the staunch and true. 

But the base in thought they may hear it not 
Though it rings the whole world through; 

If ye choose to sneer at another’s pain, 

If ye crush the weak in your greed for gain, 

The coin ye have paid will return again 
'When your wages at last fall due. 

O men must work and women must weep, 

And the world must have its way; 

And the ceaseless race for power and place, 

Goes on till the judgment day. 

But the one great presence over all. 

Who heeds e’en the tiniest sparraw’s fall, 

Will harken at last to His children’s call. 

And He will not say them nay. 

Yes the rough road tires the lagging feet, 

And the heavy fetters cling; 

And early and late we’re at odds with fate, 

For fate is a stubborn thing. 

But the end’s in view though the way be long, 

And the path grows smooth as our hearts grow strong, 
And we hear in the distance the chant of song, 

The echo of hope’s glad riag. 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


61 


To the one who fails and the one who fall* 
And the one who sinks' in the sand, 

Who waits in vain for a cheering straia, 

Or the grasp of a friendly hand, 

The message is writ and the promise sure, 
That relief is near if ye but endure. 

For the ills ye suffer behold a cure, 

At the word of Divine command. 

The soul that laughs at the taunt of fate, 

And the heart that scorns to quail, 

Shall reap in time their reward sublime, 

For the harvest cannot fail; 

And ever the reckoning time draws nigh, 

And the light leaps up to the weary eye, 

For between the clouds we may see the sky 
And the truth will yet prevail. 

Brother, a song of the day to come! 

When the stress of the night is past, 

When the rose red flush of the morning’s blush 
Breaks over the hills at last. 

O, the eyes upturned to the cheering sight, 
When the darkness scatters before the light, 
And wrong gives place to eternal right, 

In the dawn now nearing fast. 


■John P. GalUpfer. 



62 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


The Age Limit. 

It appears from their actions that the mighty combina¬ 
tions are now falling in line, to refuse work to men over 35 
years of age in some departments, and 40 years of age in 
other departments of their works, on the plan that youth 
has greater physical ability and endurance. While it is 
largely true that all employers should be alowed to run their 
business in their own way—to suit themselves—yet, when 
the commerce in a nation is formed into trusts and combines 
that have wide ramifications, and that imperil by their de¬ 
crees the very liberty, subsistence and life of many people of 
a nation, it *is as menacing a danger, and more insidious, 
than an attack from without of a foreign enemy and 
oppressor. Liberty in this Republic must be safeguarded by 
the people from its internal foes by eternal vigilance and 
action. I will add this gravely significant letter from ^ 
workingman, published in the Pittsburg Dispatch, October 
1st, 1904, and the Dispatch editor says in his editorial— 
that the letter is pubished as an indication of the way m 
which a GREAT MANY PEOPLE will regard the introduc¬ 
tion of such a hard and fast rule—also—so far as the pu; - 
lications concerning THE ORDER show the age limit is 
MORE EXTREME THAN HE STATES, BEING PU d 
AT 35—also—THAT CORPORATE COMBINATIONS 
HAVE STRONG REASONS FOR NOT LIGHTLY 
AROUSING AN ADVERSE PUBLIC OPINION. 



The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


63 


From the Pittsburg Dispatch : 

In your issue of the 25th I notice the new order of the Car¬ 
negie Company not to hire any man over 45 years old. Can it be 
possible that this order emanated from the philanthropist, A. Car¬ 
negie, Esq., or is this a creation of some of 'the younger mem¬ 
bers of the firm who have been fortunate to accumulate enough 
wealth before they became 45 years of age through some force of 
circumstances other than brains and muscle? Is it the intention 
of the Carnegie people to make Anarchists of our good American 
mechanics who, because they have thought best to try some new 
field of labor to acquire a small part of what each man thinks is his 
share of the world’s goods by trying to make more money outside 
of the m^Jl and to find he has made a mistake, or perchance misfor¬ 
tune overtaking him, tries to re-enter the workshop only to find 
the doors closed to him because he has reached the age of 45 years? 
What usually is regarded as the prime of life (at wnich time man 
is at his best both physically and mentally) is a man supposed to 
save enough money at the work bench by the time he arrives at 
that age or is he to jump off the earth, like many of our discouraged 
men are doing to-day, because of the difficulty in stemming the tide 
against making an honest living? Or is he to join the ranks of the 
Anarchists and cry, “Down with the capitalists ?” 

It is a well-recognized fact that a man with limited capital has 
poor show in prospering against the combinations of capital in 
almost all avenues of trade; and with the ban of a limited period 
of labor which the Oarnegie and the Pennsylvania railroad interests 
put on a man’s limit of usefulness what has the mechanic to look 
forward to? Is it possible that this land of the free and home of 
the brave is to become what the foreign countries are to-day? Can 
we expect in. the near future to see our American-Porn people 
migrating to some unknown place (at present) to better their con¬ 
dition, the same as the foreigners are now doing from European 
shores to ours to better their condition? It does not sound like 
an order that should originate from one of the greatest workshops in 
the world; and it is barely possible that the originators of the 
order are men who never made an honest fortune by their own 
shrewdness, but who had it thrust upon them by combinations, and 
inflated values, which the working man paid for in his ignorance. 

Imagine a mill worker, through pride and ambition to better 
his condition, leaving his trade to embark in some other vocation 
only to find he had made a mistake, and, feeling that his trade as 
a worker was a thing he could always fall back on, turning to the 
workshop only to find the limit of age, 45 years, a bar to his earn- 



64 


The Twentieth Century Awakening. 


ing a livelihood for his dear ones! Can there by anything surer to 
cause that* man to become an Anarchist ? 

The greatest labor trouble our people ever witnessed was at 
Homestead, caused by poverty-reducing wages claimed to be neces¬ 
sary by the owners because there was no money to be made at the 
raJte of wages paid. And yet that same institution has turned out 
more millionaires than any other on earth. It would be well for 
our employers of labor to heed the signs of the time and for our 
legislators to look to the immigration question, for at the rate the 
Anarchist is coming over and at the rate they are being made here 
there is no telling what the results of a few years will bring. 

Zeliemople, Pa., Sept. 28, 1904. WORKINGMAN. 



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